A meat alternative or meat substitute, also referred to as a plant-based meat, mock meat, or alternative protein, is a food product that is made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients and is consumed as a replacement for meat. The objective of meat alternatives is to replicate the qualities of meat, including its mouthfeel, flavor, and appearance. Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy (e.g., tofu, tempeh, and textured vegetable protein), but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn. Alternative protein foods can also be made by precision fermentation, where single cell organisms such as yeast produce specific proteins using a carbon source; or can be grown by culturing animal cells outside an animal, based on tissue engineering techniques. The ingredients of meat alternatives include 50–80% water, 10–25% textured vegetable proteins, 4–20% non-textured proteins, 0–15% fat and oil, 3-10% flavors/spices, 1–5% binding agents, and 0–0.5% coloring agents.
Meatless tissue engineering involves the cultivation of stem cells on natural or synthetic scaffolds to create meat-like products. Scaffolds can be made from various materials, including plant-derived biomaterials, synthetic polymers, animal-based proteins, and self-assembling polypeptides. It is these 3D scaffold-based methods that provide a specialized structural environment for cellular growth. Alternatively, scaffold-free methods promote cell aggregation, allowing cells to self-organize into tissue-like structures.
